Indescribable

I truly have no idea how to summarize the past four weeks. I will try to do it in a number of short blogs at a time, just so you get the most interesting parts in a somehow organized fashion.

It has no rhyme scheme, no pattern for stanzas, and is not edited. Bear with me.

SOUTH SUDAN SLIDING

Gravel road touching the horizon
Either side a vast wasteland
Shrubs and trees
Sand
Termite mounds reaching to the sky

Solitary soldier by the wayside
AK47 slung casually over his shoulder
Gives a nod, not a smile, but a greeting
Silent
Disappearing slowly 'round the bend

Children, wearing only robes
Herd the cattle and the goats o'er the road
Women carry water jugs on their heads
Beaded necklaces from shoulder to chin
Topless
Babies tied to their backs

Tiny towns of round mud huts
Children shouting, waving, chasing as you pass
Mothers nursing babies beneath shady trees
Buildings bombed
Dust whirling beneath your wheels as you go

Roadside scenery changing slowly
From desolate desert to waving green grass
Palm trees alone, standing against the backdrop of the mountains
Birds of all colours of the rainbow flitting to and fro
Roadside turnout...the gravel is left behind.

Now the bumping begins in earnest
Every spin of the tires drops you into a mudhole
Tires kick up thick black mud, sliding and fishtailing
And a river...down you go...water splashing over the windshield
Trucks, heavy and burdened, sunken into the mudholes
Forever to rust

Three hours! Your back is aching
Puddles glisten, thick mud hiding their depths
Men and children bathe in the water through which you pass
Staring
Splashing.

The long grasses part and there stands
An old woman
Bamboo propped on her head,
A smoking pipe in her toothless smiling mouth
The cloth she wears draped loosely over her shoulder and bare feet.

It is a world unknown. Untouched.
Surprising in its simplicity.
No pavement mars the mudholed path.
No electric wires split the blue, blue sky.
The fingers of technology and "civilization" have not come.
And maybe will not come.
And maybe should not come.

***
Okay, I know it's not a real poem. But real sentences would simply take too long and not convey any of it.

Maybe later this weekend we'll give you something of the people we met...